To My Hurting Students
Hermanas y hermanos,
It’s been a week, hasn’t it?
In a week’s time we’ve watched Amy Cooper employ racist tropes to threaten and intimidate Christian Cooper; we’ve watched four Minneapolis police officers, led by Derek Chauvin and acting within a racist social imaginary, murder our blood-bought Brother George Floyd; we’ve watched President Trump swing from condemning Floyd’s murder to employing racist dog-whistle tactics to tickle the ears of racist voters (e.g., “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” ; “Law & Order in Philadelphia, NOW!”); we’ve watched rioters raze and plunder neighborhoods with little concern for Brother Floyd or the common good; and we’ve watched streamed services promoting the same thin, historically uniformed calls for “repentance” and “reconciliation” that majority White denominations have peddled for over a century. Put bluntly, this week’s been hell.
Amid this hell, many of you are contacting me, asking for materials or practices that will help you navigate the chaos and heal. Let me offer some of each.
Materials
1) Psalms 35-58 is a portion of Scripture rich with lamentations, dirges, and righteous indignation that offer a language and vision for confronting oppressive evils. You can find Psalm 35 here.
2) Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman is a classic book that considers “The significance of the religion of Jesus to people who stand with their backs against the wall” and “Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically, and therefore effectively, with the issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion and national origin?” This book, along with Thurman himself, greatly shaped Rev. Dr. King. If you read it, you’ll see why.
3) Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie Glaude Jr. is a piercing analysis of U.S. racial oppression, particularly against Blacks, with frequent reflections on Ferguson and Michael Brown’s murder.
4) Angela Davis: An Autobiography details Davis’s experiences within and against similar racist chaos during the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s. Davis’ Autobiography is loaded with insights about how to organize people and movements to promote antiracism in the face of racial violence.
5) “Race and the Problem of Crime in Time and Newsweek Cover Stories, 1946 to 1995” by Melissa Hickman Barlow is a monumentous reflection on the linking of crime to Blacks within the U.S.
6) Thomas Aquinas’s treatments of sorrow (tristitia) and anger (ira) are some of the best I’ve ever read. Now’s a good time to read them.
Practices
1) Mourn alone. I find mourning through bullet-pointed journaling extremely helpful. As ideas and passions come, I jot them down in my tear-stained journal. You may find this helpful, too. Either way, don’t avoid sitting in and giving voice to the pains you’re experiencing. The Spirit interprets our groans, and the Father hears and answers our Spirit-graced cries.
2) Mourn in community. We need friends, family, and the people of God to mourn with us and support our mourning.
3) Avoid Job’s friends. Stay away from those who will pull the racist equivalent to Job’s friends. Now is a time for mourning racism—not defending its existence or the truth that it is impacting your individual body and the broader community.
4) Avoid casting pearls before swine or answering fools according to their folly. You’re hurting. Now is not the time for you to use what little energy you have “engaging” or “teaching” those without ears to hear and eyes to see. Yes, pray for these people as you’re able. But don’t try to be their Messiah or corrector when you need to spend time in a race-conscious medical tent recovering.
5) Read and mediate alone and in community. The above texts are a great place to start. And pivoting from individual reading and reflection to (small, 2-4 people) communal discussion about the texts will help you digest their medicinal properties and heal.
These lists aren’t exhaustive; they are merely places to start. And whether or not you take them up, know that you have my attention, love, and prayers.
Y vaya con Dios, mis amigas y amigos.
Con amor,
Nathan
